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LIK – Afterthoughts

 Had the chance to catch LIK in theatres over the weekend. And I have thoughts. Spoilers ahead.

The film showed real promise in Suriyan’s courtroom scene. It should’ve been built on the privacy vs trust, privacy vs safety argument. It had all the elements. A hero who represents the boy next door. A comical, larger than life villain who just makes sense. And can easily steal the show. A heroine, though easily replaceable with a lamp, who is your typical representation of the online generation. Yet, it goes on to preach another interpretation of what true love is. 

The 3% match being the central turning point felt very ill thought of. I get it. It’s the same guy who made Naanum Rowdy Thaan, but he’s now over 40. But anybody using any app, would realise that app data builds up over time and usage. So, the fact that Vaas only had 3% match with Dheema had nothing to do with love. He’s been on the app for a week, solely to talk to her. There are no usage patterns, and his usage of lik is highly skewed. A good match algorithm would take a lot of factors into consideration. No wonder it gave him a 3/100. Because, all the other factors did not have enough data to score upon. A little probe either via the millennial or the gen-z method would’ve explained this more.

I personally liked Suriyan’s character, and the concept of lik. It reminded me of the time I made a dating app based on user’s spotify history matching for my software engineering course. His motive for the app turned a little dark in the end, but the premise is completely reasonable. Because if true love at first sight did exist and all love reliably led somewhere, dating apps wouldn’t be this prevalent. Anything can be talked out, right?

There were three things about the movie that worked. Suriyan. The primary reason I went to the theatre was to watch the climax on the big screen. Revival of aakko. And the humour. Humour works, and it adds a little weight to the movie otherwise heavily carried by the villain. But is Suriyan the real villain? Privately funded espionage is indeed immoral, but to the cinema that has long had the hero tracking every move of his love interest by stalking her, doesn’t this seem like a natural progression?

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